My family wants a Nintendo Switch and the latest Zelda game. Anyone seen any good package deals? The package need not contain the Zelda game, but if there was one with extra controllers or whatever else is needed with a Switch, that would be good.

I've moved on to gaming at 1080P @ 144Hz and it is definitely struggling to keep up with AAA games. The most obvious bottlenecks are the GPU and the Hard Drive, would I need to upgrade other things as well? What would be a good GPU for 1080P @ 144Hz?

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Originally Posted by Incredible Hulctuary

a casual gamer on a normal monitor isn't going to notice or need that extra fps, at least not to the extent of spending an extra $150.

IMO, the choice should be between the GTX 1060 with 3GB vs. 1060 with 6GB, not 1070 vs 1080.

I think you missed the 144hz and AAA games part though. I had a 1060 for about a year and yeah, it can get between 70-100 on lower settings on mostly modern games, but I don't think it fits this situation, especially as games get more demanding in the future.

I got an email this morning for a 1070ti for $360 after MIR, which isn't too bad. 1080's still around $450. 1060 6gb is down to $220, so if other people are looking for a more budget card for 60fps esports titles, that's a good option like hulctuary said

Felt this was a good deal. This monitor has been out for a while and has good reviews. Should be a big upgrade from my 60 hz ASUS monitor while not breaking the bank and getting a monitor I can't use to potential with my 1060 card (ie: 1440p etc).

I have an NVIDIA card so the FreeSync won't do anything, but I consider this a good upgrade for time being. Maybe sometime in the future if I do a big system upgrade with a big boy GPU I'll consider shelling out for a nicer monitor with 1440p, G-Sync, etc. Then this would be a good secondary monitor to have around.

@ Fat_Ninja, I agree with DJPIM and others, if you want to do a substantial upgrade but not full build, then SSD, GPU, and RAM are the big ones (and yes, double check the power supply).

The SSD will make it feel like a new computer anyway once you get windows and your main games on it.

Getting up to 16 GB of RAM will clear out any potential bottlenecks there.

As for GPU, obviously this comes with the most preference and budget restriction. If you want to be set for a while, then 1080 is the card IMO. I actually agree with Hulk that 1060 is okay if you want to think of this as a more temporary upgrade until potentially doing a full rebuild. That is basically where I'm at as I could see myself maybe 2 or 3 years down the line doing either a rebuild or big overhaul to get high end GPU. Of course, even if you decide to do a full rebuild later on, you can still use that 1080 as it will have solid future value, I mean it is a seriously good GPU. I don't think the 1070 makes the most sense for you right now as it straddles the line of significant upgrade vs temporary upgrade.

The only upgrade of the 3 mentioned that can't be transferred over to a new build if you choose to do so a couple years down the line will be the RAM.

Too lazy to type, so here are the specs of my cheapy travel laptop. CPU is soldered onto the mobo, so can't be upgraded. I use this computer when I travel -- remote play to my PS4, installed Steam games, email, Office, Netflix, etc.

It takes forever to boot, and I don't mean the boot process, I mean, once Windows loads it takes several minutes to show all the icons, open Chrome, etc. Once it's been running a while, it seems faster.

Doesn't make sense (IMHO) to put a $150 1 TB SSD into a $250 laptop, but I was contemplating putting more RAM in. Given the (non)robustness of the CPU would 16GB of RAM make it any faster? Or is the CPU the problem? I use this laptop every day (I take it back and forth to work so I can use it at lunchtime) so it's worth the spend if it will make a difference.

I would buy a new one, but I'm having a hard time finding one like this -- in this size (11 inches) you find more tablets than PCs. And the small size is what I like.

EDIT -- if you think an SSD would speed it up quite a bit, I would consider it, so that's not a deal-breaker, just my first thought.

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All opinions are either my own, or made up for dramatic and/or comedic effect.

Also, if you wanna think long-term Fat Ninja, getting a 1080 that will be easy to SLI with another 1080 sometime in the future when you do bite the bullet and upgrade CPU and motherboard for a new build would be pretty pretty nice.

Edit: Actually, I did a bit more research on this and SLI doesn't sound like a great option for compatibility reasons.

It takes forever to boot, and I don't mean the boot process, I mean, once Windows loads it takes several minutes to show all the icons, open Chrome, etc. Once it's been running a while, it seems faster.

Doesn't make sense (IMHO) to put a $150 1 TB SSD into a $250 laptop, but I was contemplating putting more RAM in. Given the (non)robustness of the CPU would 16GB of RAM make it any faster? Or is the CPU the problem? I use this laptop every day (I take it back and forth to work so I can use it at lunchtime) so it's worth the spend if it will make a difference.

Hard to say exactly what the biggest bottleneck is, but an SSD would definitely help with booting, but when your CPU is only clocking 1.6 ghz and is one of those (U) (ultra low-power) models, you're not going to be getting much mileage out of it. If you really want to keep it, maybe find a really cheap 256gb SSD and start with that. RAM could help, but I think the CPU is going to hold you back before your RAM.

Would a Surface Pro fit your needs? I had one for a while and it was very conveniently portable, but I found I stopped using it after I finished school